There are about 21,717 different species of native plants and animals in the United States. More than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect species have been documented.[1] Wetlands, such as the Florida Everglades, are the base for much of this diversity. There are over 140,000 invertebrates in the United States which is constantly growing as researchers identify more species. Fish are the largest group of animal species, with over one thousand counted so far. About 13,000 species are added to the list of known organisms each year. Most of these animal species have become extinct or only survive in captivity.[2]

Around 14,000 species of fungi were listed by Farr, Bills, Chamuris and Rossman in 1989.[3] Still, this list only included terrestrial species. It did not include lichen-forming fungi, fungi on dung, freshwater fungi, marine fungi or many other categories. Fungi are essential to the survival of many groups of organisms.

With habitats ranging from tropical to Arctic, U.S. plant life is very diverse. The country has more than 17,000 identified native species of flora, including 5,000 in California (home to the tallest, the most massive, and the oldest trees in the world).[4] Three quarters of the United States species consist of flowering plants.

The U.S. climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, Mediterranean in coastal California and arid in the Great Basin. Its comparatively generous climate contributed (in part) to the country's rise as a world power, with infrequent severe drought in the major agricultural regions, a general lack of widespread flooding, and a mainly temperate climate that receives adequate precipitation.

The United States mainland contains a total of nine distinct regional climates. Those include Northwestern region, the High plains, Midwest/Ohio valley region, New England/mid Atlantic, Southeast, Southern region, and Southwestern region. Each region contains different states and has their own climate and temperatures throughout the year.[8]

The lower 48 states can be divided into roughly five physiographic provinces: the American cordillera, the Canadian Shield, the stable platform, the coastal plain, and the Appalachianorogenic belt. The richly textured landscape of the United States is a product of the dueling forces of plate tectonics, weathering, and erosion. Tectonic upheavals and colliding plates have raised great mountain ranges while the forces of erosion and weathering worked to tear them down. The plate tectonic history of a region strongly influences the rock type and structure exposed at the surface, but differing rates of erosion along with changing climates can also have impacts on the land.[9]

In 1872, the world's first national park was established at Yellowstone. Another fifty-seven national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks and forests have since been formed.[10]Wilderness areas have been established around the country to ensure long-term protection of pristine habitats. Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 1,020,779 square miles (2,643,807 km2), 28.8% of the country's total land area.[11] Protected parks and forestland constitute most of this. As of March 2004, approximately 16% of public land under Bureau of Land Management administration was being leased for commercial oil and natural gas drilling;[12] public land is also leased for mining and cattle ranching.

Climate change, species conservation, invasive species, mining, pesticides, and waste are just some of the environmental issues in the United States. Global warming is the greatest cause of impact to the environment.

The United States maintains hundreds of national parks as well as several preservation areas, such as in the Florida Everglades. There are more than 400 protected sites spread across 84 million acres but very few are large enough to contain ecosystems.

The Nature Conservancy works with public and private partners to ensure our lands and waters are protected for future generations. They work in all 50 states, protecting habitats from grasslands to coral reefs and addressing threats to conservation.[13]

Alaska is a U. S. state located in the northwest extremity of North America. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas–the southern parts of the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 3rd least populous, approximately half of Alaskas residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaskas economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, military bases and tourism are a significant part of the economy. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30,1867, the area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11,1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3,1959, the name Alaska was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut, or Unangam idiom, which refers to the mainland of Alaska. Literally, it means object to which the action of the sea is directed, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere.

Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America and it is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use, Alaska is not part of the contiguous U. S. often called the Lower 48. The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. Alaskas territorial waters touch Russias territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island, Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the area of the next three largest states, Texas and Montana. It is larger than the area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States, as such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase.

Composed of igneous rock resulting from its long volcanic history, the area is covered by a thin layer of soil. Human population is sparse, and industrial development is minimal, while mining is prevalent, the Canadian Shield is a physiographic division, consisting of five smaller, physiographic provinces, the Laurentian Upland, Kazan Region, Davis and James. The shield extends into the United States as the Adirondack Mountains, the Canadian Shield is U-shaped and is a subsection of the Laurentiacraton signifying the area of greatest glacial impact creating the thin soils. The Canadian Shield is more than 3.96 billion years old, the Canadian Shield once had jagged peaks, higher than any of todays mountains, but millions of years of erosion have changed these mountains to rolling hills. The Canadian Shield was the first part of North America to be elevated above sea level and has remained almost wholly untouched by successive encroachments of the sea upon the continent. It is the Earths greatest area of exposed Archean rock, the metamorphic base rocks are mostly from the Precambrian Supereon, and have been repeatedly uplifted and eroded.

Today it consists largely of an area of low relief 300 to 610 m above sea level with a few monadnocks, during the Pleistocene Epoch, continental ice sheets depressed the land surface, scooped out thousands of lake basins, and carried away much of the regions soil. When the Greenland section is included, the Shield is approximately circular, bounded on the northeast by the northeast edge of Greenland and it covers much of Greenland, most of Quebec north of the St. In total, the area of the Shield covers approximately 8,000,000 km2. The underlying rock structure includes Hudson Bay, the Canadian Shield is among the oldest on earth, with regions dating from 2.5 to 4.2 billion years. The multitude of rivers and lakes in the region is caused by the watersheds of the area being so young. It has some of the oldest volcanoes on the planet and it has over 150 volcanic belts whose bedrock ranges from 600 to 1200 million years old. Each belt probably grew by the coalescence of accumulations erupted from numerous vents, many of Canadas major ore deposits are associated with Precambrian volcanoes.

The Sturgeon Lake Caldera in Kenora District, Ontario, is one of the worlds best preserved mineralizedNeoarcheancaldera complexes, the Canadian Shield contains the Mackenzie dike swarm, which is the largest dike swarm known on Earth. Mountains have deep roots and float on the denser mantle much like an iceberg at sea, as mountains erode, their roots rise and are eroded in turn. The rocks that now form the surface of the Shield were once far below the Earths surface, the high pressures and temperatures at those depths provided ideal conditions for mineralization. Although these mountains are now eroded, many large mountains still exist in Canadas far north called the Arctic Cordillera. This is a vast deeply dissected mountain range, stretching from northernmost Ellesmere Island to the northernmost tip of Labrador, the ranges highest peak is Nunavuts Barbeau Peak at 2,616 metres above sea level

Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States of America, having received statehood on August 21,1959. Hawaii is the only U. S. state located in Oceania and it is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is the only U. S. state not located in the Americas, the state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian archipelago, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are—in order from northwest to southeast, Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe and the Island of Hawaiʻi. The last is the largest island in the group, it is called the Big Island or Hawaiʻi Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania, Hawaii has over a million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U. S. military personnel.

Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii is the 8th-smallest and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the fifty U. S. states. It is the state with an Asianplurality. The states coastline is about 750 miles long, the fourth longest in the U. S. after the coastlines of Alaska, the state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that was named for Hawaiʻiloa and he is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled. The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian *Sawaiki, cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori and Samoan. According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, lsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the home, but in Hawaii. A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as an official state language.

The title of the constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii, diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949, predates the use of the okina and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography. The exact spelling of the name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications and office titles, and the Seal of Hawaii use the spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length

A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence.

The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible.

The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being the worlds first national park. In some European countries, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory

World War II, known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.

The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery.

Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is not universally agreed upon.

It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan

President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies, the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The mission of the BLM is to sustain the health, originally BLM holdings were described as land nobody wanted because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits, the agency manages 221 wilderness areas,23 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Landscape Conservation System totaling about 30 million acres. There are more than 63,000 oil and gas wells on BLM public lands, total energy leases generated approximately $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, and Native American groups. The BLMs roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution.

As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored, during the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies. After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, France, in the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function, Land was sold so that the government would have money to survive. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted, the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by trial and error, once the territory of Ohio had been surveyed, in 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were finally fulfilled, over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land.

Several different types of patents existed and these include cash entry, homestead, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, state selections, town sites, and town lots. A system of land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land that was surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory. This pattern gradually spread across the entire United States, the laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing and production of selected commodities, such as coal, gas, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees. The Oregon and CaliforniaRevested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937, commonly referred as the O&C Act, in 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.

The common use of the name sequoia generally refers to Sequoiadendron giganteum, which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The etymology of the name has been presumed—initially in The Yosemite Book by Josiah Whitney in 1868—to be in honor of Sequoyah. Giant sequoias are the worlds largest single trees and largest living thing by volume, Giant sequoias grow to an average height of 50–85 m and 6–8 m in diameter. Record trees have been measured to be 94.8 m in height, claims of 17 m diameter have been touted by taking an authors writing out of context, but the widest known at chest height is closer to 8.2 m. Between 2014 and 2016, specimens of coast redwood were found to have larger trunk diameters than all known giant sequoias, the oldest known giant sequoia based on ring count is 3,500 years old. Giant Sequoias are among the oldest living things on Earth, Sequoia bark is fibrous and may be 90 cm thick at the base of the columnar trunk.

It provides significant fire protection for the trees, the leaves are evergreen, awl-shaped, 3–6 millimetres long, and arranged spirally on the shoots. The seed is brown, 4–5 millimetres long and 1 millimetre broad, with a 1-millimetre wide. Some seeds are shed when the cone scales shrink during hot weather in late summer, the giant sequoia regenerates by seed. Young trees start to bear cones at the age of 12 years, Trees up to about 20 years old may produce stump sprouts subsequent to injury, but unlike coast redwoods, shoots do not form on the stumps of mature trees. Giant sequoias of all ages may sprout from their boles when branches are lost to fire or breakage, at any given time, a large tree may be expected to have about 11,000 cones. Cone production is greatest in the portion of the canopy. A mature giant sequoia has been estimated to disperse 300, 000–400,000 seeds per year, the winged seeds may be carried up to 180 metres from the parent tree. Lower branches die fairly readily from shading, but trees less than 100 years old retain most of their dead branches, trunks of mature trees in groves are generally free of branches to a height of 20–50 metres, but solitary trees will retain low branches.

Because of its size, the tree has been studied for its water pull, Sequoias supplement water from the soil with fog, taken up through air roots, at heights to where the root water cannot be pulled. The natural distribution of giant sequoias is restricted to an area of the western Sierra Nevada. They occur in scattered groves, with a total of 68 groves, nowhere does it grow in pure stands, although in a few small areas, stands do approach a pure condition. The northern two-thirds of its range, from the American River in Placer County southward to the Kings River, has only eight disjunct groves, the remaining southern groves are concentrated between the Kings River and the Deer Creek Grove in southern Tulare County

Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park. Conservation generally refers to the act of consciously and efficiently using land and/or its natural resources. This can be in the form of setting aside tracts of land for protection from hunting or urban development, or it can take the form of using resources such as metal, water. Usually, this process of conservation occurs through or after legislation on local or national levels is passed, during the 19th century, some Americans developed a deep and abiding passion for nature. Likewise, in 1860, Frederic Edwin Church painted Twilight in the Wilderness, many American writers romanticized and focused upon nature as a subject matter. However, the most notable literary figure upon the early conservation movement proved to be Henry David Thoreau, throughout his work, Thoreau detailed his experiences at the natural setting of Walden Pond and his deep appreciation for nature.

In one instance, he described a deep grief for a tree that was cut down, as he states in Walden, Thoreau was interested in the preservation of nature. This speech became one of Thoreaus most influential contributions to conservationist thought. The early conservation movement in the United States was due to the hard work of John Muir. Muir, who is cited as one of the first American environmentalists, has earned multiple American honors for environmental work. His family home in Martinez, California, is honored as a National Historic Site and so is his home in Portage. He was a former worker who was nearly blinded by an accident at work. After almost losing his sight, Muir decided to see Americas natural wonders, based upon his travels throughout Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Muir wrote a collection of articles for Century magazine, entitled Studies in the Sierra. Early Americans recognized the importance of resources and the necessity of wilderness preservation for sustained yield harvesting of natural resources.

In essence, the preservation of wilderness and landscapes were recognized as critical for future generations, the foundation of the conservation movement is grounded during this period between 1850 and 1920. Ultimately, historical trends and cultural mind-sets were united, which influenced ideas, environmental historians, like Carolyn Merchant, cite Muir as someone who was unwilling to extend his efforts of conservation toward groups of people who were not white. America had its own movement in the 19th century, most often characterized by George Perkins Marsh, author of Man. The expedition into northwest Wyoming in 1871 led by F. V, travels by U. S. PresidentTheodore Roosevelt through the region around Yellowstone provided the impetus for the creation of the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve in 1891

The western portion of Alta California was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, real estate services and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA.

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups were diverse in their organization with bands, villages. Trade and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years English explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manilagalleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565

The U. S. has many distinctive indigenous species found nowhere else on Earth. With most of the North American continent, the U. S. lies in the Nearctic faunistic realm, an estimated 432 species of mammals characterize the fauna of the continental U. S. There are more than 800 species of bird and more than 100,000 known species of insects, there are 311 known reptiles,295 amphibians and 1154 known fish species in the U. S. The red-tailed hawk is one of the most widely distributed not only in the U. S. Huge parts of the country with the most distinctive indigenous wildlife are protected as national parks, in 2013, the U. S. had more than 6770 national parks or protected areas, all together more than 1,006,619 sq. miles. The first national park was Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the U. S. There are 67 species of mammals in the park, including the wolf, the threatened lynx. The ecoregions and ecology found in the Western United States are extremely varied, the western continental coast of the U. S.

just as the East Coast, varies from a colder-to-warmer climate from north to south. Few species live though-out the entire West Coast, there are some, in most of the contagious Western U. S. are mule deer, white-tailed antelope squirrels, American badgers, coyotes and several species of snakes and lizards are common. While the American black bear lives throughout the U. S. the brown bears and grizzly bears are common in the northwest. Along the West Coast there are species of whales, sea otters, California sea lions, eared seals. In the dry, inland areas of states such as California, Nevada and New Mexico there are some of the world’s most venomous lizards, snakes. The most notorious might be the Gila monster and Mohaverattlesnake, the Sonoran Desert has eleven species of rattlesnakes - more than anywhere else in the world. Along the southwestern border there are jaguars and ocelots, other mammals include the Virginia opossum, which occurs throughout California and coastal areas in Oregon and Washington.

The North American beaver and mountain beaver live in forested areas of Washington, the kit fox lives throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, while the gray fox occurs throughout the Western U. S. The red fox occurs mostly in Oregon and Washington, while the fox is a native to six of the eight Channel Islands in Southern California. The raccoon and spotted skunk occur throughout the Western U. S. while the ring-tailed cat occurs throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Western Texas, Colorado, the American black bear occurs in most western states, including Washington, California and Colorado. The Channel Islands National Park consists of five out of the eight California Channel Islands, the Channel Islands are part of one of the richest marine biospheres of the world

The American bison, commonly known as the American buffalo or simply buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds. Bison were seen in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750. Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described, the bison, smaller in size and with a more rounded hump. Furthermore, the bison has been suggested to consist of a northern. However, this is not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of bovid in the world, surpassed by only the Asiangaur and it is the largest extant land animal in the Americas. The American bison is the mammal of the United States. The term buffalo is considered to be a misnomer for this animal, and could be confused with true buffalos, the Asian water buffalo. The name buffalo is listed in dictionaries as an acceptable name for American buffalo or bison. In reference to animal, the term buffalo dates to 1625 in North American usage when the term was first recorded for the American mammal.

It thus has a longer history than the term bison. The American bison is very related to the wisent or European bison. In Plains Indian languages in general and female buffaloes are distinguished, a bison has a shaggy, dark-brown winter coat, and a lighter-weight, lighter-brown summer coat. As is typical in ungulates, the bison is slightly larger than the female and, in some cases. Plains bison are often in the range of sizes. Head-and-body lengths range from 2 to 3.5 m long, shoulder heights in the species can range from 152 to 186 cm. Weights can range from 318 to 1,000 kg Mature bulls tend to be larger than cows. Cow weights have had reported medians of 450 to 495 kg, with one small sample averaging 479 kg, the heaviest wild bull ever recorded weighed 1,270 kg

Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. Introduced species that become established and spread beyond the place of introduction are called invasive species, some have a negative effect on a local ecosystem. Some introduced species may have no effect or only minor impact. Some species have been introduced intentionally to combat pests and they are called biocontrols and may be regarded as beneficial as an alternative to pesticides in agriculture for example. In some instances the potential for being beneficial or detrimental in the long run remains unknown, a list of some introduced species is given in a separate article. The effects of introduced species on natural environments have gained much scrutiny from scientists, the terminology associated with introduced species is now in flux for various reasons. The term invasive refers only to those species that become established, for practical purposes, this term is applied only to invasive species that cause damage. With respect to plants, these latter are in this case defined as either ornamental or cultivated plants, called an exotic or non-native species.

Such species might be termed naturalized, wild non-native species, if they further spread beyond the place of introduction they are called invasive. The transition from introduction, to establishment and to invasion has been described in the context of plants, introduced species are essentially non-native species. Invasive species are introduced species that spreadwidely or quickly and cause harm, be that to the environment, human health. There have been calls from scientists to consider a species only in terms of their spread. According to a definition, an invasive species is one that has been introduced and become a pest in its new location. The term is used to both a sense of urgency and actual or potential harm. Executive Order 13112 defines invasive species as a species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. The biological definition of species, on the other hand, makes no reference to the harm they may cause. From a regulatory perspective, it is neither desirable nor practical to list as undesirable or outright ban all non-native species, regulations require a definitional distinction between non-natives that are deemed especially onerous and all others.

Introduced pest species that are listed as invasive, best fit the definition of an invasive species

North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere; it is also considered by some to be a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south …

The United States of America, commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's …

The environmental movement, also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship …

The fauna of the United States of America is all the animals living in the Continental United States and its surrounding seas and islands, the Hawaiian Archipelago, Alaska in the Arctic, and several island-territories in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. The U.S. has many distinctive indigenous …

The native flora of the United States includes about 17,000 species of vascular plants, plus tens of thousands of additional species of other plants and plant-like organisms such as algae, lichens and other fungi, and mosses. About 3,800 additional non-native species of vascular plants are recorded …

The Everglades is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin and part of the neotropic ecozone. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but …

A lichen is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. The combined lichen has properties different from those of its component organisms. Lichens come in many …

Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1,200–1,800 years or more …

An introduced species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, either deliberate or accidental. Non-native species can have various effects on the local …

Pleistocene megafauna is the set of large animals that lived on Earth during the Pleistocene epoch and became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event. Megafauna is a term used to describe animals with an adult body weight of over 44 kg. — Paleoecology — The last glacial period …

Recreation of a scene in late Pleistocene northern Spain, by Mauricio Antón

The American bison or simply bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo or simply buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed North America in vast herds. Their historical range, by 9000 BC, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland …

The California condor is a New World vulture, the largest North American land bird. This condor became extinct in the wild in 1987, but the species has since been reintroduced to northern Arizona and southern Utah (including …

Human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group. Overpopulation can further be viewed, in a long term perspective, as existing if a …

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring …

Deforestation, clearance, clearcutting or clearing is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land which is then converted to a non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical …

Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States, having received statehood on August 21, 1959. Hawaii is the only U.S. state located in Oceania, the only U.S. state located outside North America, and the only one composed …

A true-color satellite view of Hawaii shows that most of the vegetation on the islands grows on their northeast sides, which face the wind. The silver glow around the southwest of the islands is the result of calmer waters.

Florida is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida …

The Great Plains is the broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland, that lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie in the United States and east of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. and Canada. It embraces …

California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth …

The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North …

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total …

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest, is the informal name for a region of the western United States. Definitions of the region's boundaries vary a great deal and have never been standardized, though many boundaries have been proposed. For example, one definition …

Las Vegas, officially the City of Las Vegas and often known simply as Vegas, is the 28th-most populated city in the United States, the most populated city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas …

This view of downtown Las Vegas shows a mushroom cloud in the background. Scenes such as this were typical during the 1950s. From 1951 to 1962 the government conducted 100 atmospheric tests at the nearby Nevada Test Site.

Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L.A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, and the third most populous city in North America. With an …

Water scarcity is the lack of fresh water resources to meet water demand. It affects every continent and was listed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks in terms of potential impact over the next decade. It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed …

In Meatu district, Simiyu Region, Tanzania (Africa), water most often comes from open holes dug in the sand of dry riverbeds, and it is invariably contaminated. Many children are deprived of an education primarily due to this daily task.

The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier canadien, is a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks that forms the ancient geological core of the North American continent (the North American Craton or …

The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before …

An orogeny is an event that leads to both structural deformation and compositional differentiation of the Earth's lithosphere at convergent plate margins. An orogen or orogenic belt develops when a continental plate crumples and is pushed upwards to form one or more …

Two processes that can contribute to the formation of orogens. Top: delamination of orogenic roots into the asthenosphere; Bottom: Subduction of lithospheric plate to mantle depths. The two processes lead to differently located metamorphic rocks (bubbles in diagram), providing evidence as to which process actually occurred at convergent plate margins.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 serves as the enacting legislation to carry out the provisions outlined in The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction …

A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of'wild …

Bogd Khan Uul National Park, Mongolia. One of the earliest preserved areas now called a national park.

The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres of public lands in the United States which constitutes one-eighth of the landmass of the country. President Harry S. Truman created the …

Horses crossing a plain near the Simpson Park Wilderness Study Area in central Nevada, managed by the Battle Mountain BLM Field Office

Snow-covered cliffs of Snake River Canyon, Idaho, managed by the Boise District of the BLM

Lightning-sparked wildfires are frequent occurrences on BLM land in Nevada.

The question of whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been an ongoing political controversy in the United States since 1977. As of 2017, Republicans have attempted to allow drilling in ANWR almost fifty times, finally being successful with the passage of the Tax …

Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park. Conservation generally refers to the act of consciously and efficiently using land and/or its natural resources. This can be in the form of setting aside tracts of land for …

Yosemite National Park

In 1956 the US Post Office began issuing postage stamps depicting wildlife to emphasize the importance of wildlife conservation in America.